Contested land and blurred rights in the Land of Fires (Italy)

ABSTRACT

The paper addresses the issue of contested land and the clarification of blurred rights concerning urban environments with weak public sector territorial control and the entrenchment of organized crime in the Global North. Adopting a grey spacing approach, we focus on urban informalities in the urban region of Naples (south of Italy) such as uncontrolled land use, ranging from unlawful waste disposal to unauthorized building. We argue that in-depth field research may be helpful in unravelling the entanglement of the formal and the informal, and its findings may become a resource for planning. On the one hand, this is possible by leveraging the informal in order to carry out forward-looking policies and, on the other, by channelling informal practices into suitable formal tools benefitting the public interest. In conclusion, modifying current balances and powers concerning land is a political action, as it helps treat conflicts, unravel the dispute between real and presumed rights, and uncover hidden rights in the public arena.

KEYWORDS:

• Formality/informality
• grey governance
• contested land
• unauthorized building
• rights concerning land

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Istat Census data for 2001 and 2011 showed that the urban region between Caserta and Naples has one of the highest rates of unemployment in Italy, accompanied by widespread poverty and low levels of education. This is a marginal context in terms of both social class and income.

2 The world-wide success of the novel Gomorrah by Saviano (2006), from which also TV series, movies and theatre shows have drawn their inspiration, was due to the author’s ability to depict clear images of the contemporary urban region between Naples and Caserta, including a realistic description of the lifestyles of OC operating in the Campania region.

3 Useful sources to reconstruct the dynamics of this relationship come from the most important criminal trials in the province of Caserta from the Eighties onwards.

4 The topic of closure to the outside world marking a behavioural change with respect to the past is recurrent in the interviews, often followed by reflection on the need to reconstruct a sense of place and community.

5 It was possible to obtain information regarding corrupt practice relating to planning permission in Casal di Principe thanks to interviews with officials from the town’s administrative bodies, councillors, and the owners of informal buildings.

6 On demolition as a penalty, see the fourth title of Decree of the President of the Republic n. 380 of 6 June 2001.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the PRIN ‘Post-metropolitan territories as emergent forms of urban space: coping with sustainability, habitability and governance’, and the Agreement on ‘urban planning and environmental regeneration’ between University of Naples Federico II and the Municipality of Casal di Principe.